target="_blank">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 200px; height: 145px; float: left;"
alt="" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/63200"
hspace="3">So, you’ve decided on being a
Rogue, a member of the shadowy
brotherhood. How do you go about attaining wealth, power, and prestige?
It’s a harsh world, and you’re all alone. Armed at
the beginning with only a dagger and some meager scraps of armor, where
do you go from there? Fear not! This guide, along with some handy
wisdom from the legendary rogue, Adrian “Seven
Fingers” Slotsky, will give you the knowledge necessary to
survive solo for the first 40 levels of your character. Let’s
begin!

Combat

You’re going to be doing a lot of killing to get
to level 40. The good thing is that you’re great at it. As
soon as you’re able, learn to use swords from a weapon
trainer (Stormwind for Alliance, Undercity for Horde). Your primary
attack ability,
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Sinister_Strike"
target="_blank">Sinister Strike, adds to your base
weapon damage, and swords have a higher base damage than daggers.
Overall, your attack cycle will remain constant throughout this time,
with a few minor wrinkles. First, you should always try to attack from
stealth and from behind your foe. As Seven Fingers noted,
“the best place to stick a blade is in the back. Even better
if they’re sleeping.” Begin with
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Backstab"
target="_blank">Backstab (if using a dagger) or
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Garrote"
target="_blank">Garrote. Then use your
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Slice_and_Dice"
target="_blank">Slice and Dice ability. The faster
attack rate really amps up your DPS. After that, use you Sinister
Strike ability to build up your combo points. Finally, use a finishing
move like
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Eviscerate"
target="_blank">Eviscerate or
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Rupture_"
target="_blank">Rupture. You don’t have
to build up to 5 combo points before you use your finishing move. If
you think that you’ll finish your opponent off with it, then
use it. For a normal fight against a single opponent, you should finish
them off with this sequence without having to begin again.

What if there’s more than one opponent grouped in an area?
There are several options available to a savvy rogue. The first option
is to try to lure one opponent away by using a ranged attack such as a
throwing knife or bow. As long as there is some distance between your
target and the other enemies, you should be able to draw him out so you
can fight him solo. The downside to this is that you can’t
attack from stealth. In this case, open with a Sinister Strike followed
by Slice and Dice.

If there are two or more enemies close together, then you can attempt
to use
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Sap"
target="_blank">Sap on them. Stealth up to them,
from behind, and sap one of the enemies. If there are only two of them,
then you can attack the second foe. If there are more than two enemies,
you can attempt to sap multiple targets (remember to watch your energy)
before attacking the last enemy. Use your
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Distract"
target="_blank">Distract ability to get them to
face away from you. At most, it’s probably best not to attack
more than 3 targets at a time. As Seven Fingers said, “as
skilled as I am, I still bleed when stabbed.”

target="_blank">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 200px; height: 150px; float: right;"
alt="" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/63199"
hspace="3">Spellcasters are a special nuisance and
deserve your attention (and all
the pain you can inflict upon them!) It’s always best to take
out spellcasters first as they can do many different things to you,
such as damage, slowing your attack speed, or just plain forcing you to
run away. For these troublemakers (and future corpses), use your
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Kick"
target="_blank">Kick ability to disrupt their
spellcasting. If they start casting again and your Kick
hasn’t cooldowned yet, then use
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Gouge"
target="_blank">Gouge. Chances are that your Gouge
will only last a second or two since you’ll probably have
infected them with poison (more on poison later), but it will disrupt
their spell and give your Kick time to cooldown.

If you’re forced to fight multiple opponents at the same
time, through an accidental pull or a wandering patrol, there are
several things you can do. First, use your
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Evasion"
target="_blank">Evasion. This gives you a 50%
chance to dodge for 15 seconds. Next, keep your Slice and Dice going at
all times. It greatly enhances your damage, so keep it up. Use your
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Dismantle"
target="_blank">Dismantle ability to disarm your
first foe, then switch your focus to the second enemy. While the first
one is just hitting you with his fists, you can kill the one that is
hitting you with something sharp! If you have Blade Flurry (the
earliest level to get it is level 30), then use it. This ability
increases your attack speed (and it stacks with Slice and Dice), plus
inflicts damage upon an adjacent enemy. After you kill the first foe,
the second one should almost be dead by the time he gets your loving
attention. If there’s a spellcaster in the group attacking
you, kill him first. If you’re level 40, you can activate
Adrenaline Rush (if you’re combat specced) at the beginning
of the fight. This ability gives you a 100% energy regeneration rate
for 15 seconds.

target="_blank">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 200px; height: 150px; float: left;"
alt="" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/63198"
hspace="3">Despite being a killing machine, you
can still be overwhelmed. What to
do if this happens? “Get the hell out of there!”
says Seven Fingers.
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Vanish"
target="_blank">Vanish will become your best
friend at this time. This ability allows you to, well, Vanish and go
back into stealth. You can also use
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Sprint"
target="_blank">Sprint to haul ass out of there
and keep running. If there is just one foe left, you can use
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Gouge"
target="_blank">Gouge or
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Kidney_Shot"
target="_blank">Kidney Shot to give you time to
run away. At level 34, you can use
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Blind"
target="_blank">Blind on your opponent to give you
time to slap a quick bandage on yourself (if there’s only one
enemy on you).

Remember, the goal is to fight smart. Let the brain-challenged warriors
flex their muscles and grunt as they flail away. By contrast, you are a
precision instrument. Use your multitude of abilities to their best
advantage. Pick your fights carefully, pick off the loners first, use
your stealth, and be the death dealing harbinger of doom that you can
be.

Lockpicking

Once you hit level 16, you can learn the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Pick_Lock"
target="_blank">Pick Lock ability from your
trainer. Lockpicking is used to pick doors, chests, and lockboxes.
Chests and lockboxes can contain money and items (sometimes extremely
valuable items). You can gain a maximum of 5 points per level in
lockpicking (thus, at level 40, you’ll have a max of 200
lockpicking). There are several areas to practice your lockpicking,
plus you can also use the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/rogue/spells1-40#Pick_Pocket"
target="_blank">Pick Pocket ability to gain
junkboxes off of foes for you to open. Junkboxes are a great way to
level up your lockpicking, plus you’ll get some extra loot!
Listed below are the several areas in which you can increase your
lockpicking.

Now, we get to poisons, or as Seven Fingers calls them,
“one of the most beautiful things ever created. A blade,
glistening with a fresh coat of poison, is truly a work of
art.” At level 20, you’ll get a quest chain from
your trainer which will result in allowing you to use poisons. If
you’re going solo, it’s best to wait a couple of
levels to do these quests. Once completed, you’ll be able to
slap one of four different poisons upon your blades. Once
applied, each poison lasts for one hour. Alliance players begin the
quest chain by talking to Master Mathias Shaw at SI:7 headquarters
located in Old Town in Stormwind. Horde players begin by talking to
Shenthul in the Cleft of Shadow in Orgrimmar.

target="_blank">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 200px; height: 150px; float: right;"
alt="" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/63201"
hspace="3">To
begin, I would recommend using Instant Poison on both your blades.
You’ll be surprised how often a 20% chance to inflict poison
damage will occur. Don’t worry about Mind-numbing poisons to
use against spellcasters. The best way to slow their spellcasting is to
make them stop breathing which is done by inflicting huge amounts of
damage upon them as quickly as you can. Once you hit level 32, you can
switch to Wound poisons. While it looks like the damage is less, the
chance to inflict the poison damage is 50%. Crippling poison can be
extremely useful as well. If you’re having problems with
enemies running away, then slap a crippling poison on your slower (main
hand) blade. This should allow you to run them down and keep them from
getting away and bringing back a friend or two to ruin your day.

Make sure that your blades are poisoned at all times. If
you’re not using poison, then you’re just not
trying hard enough. Remember, you’re not some bone-headed
do-goody Paladin, you’re a Rogue! A down and dirty,
backstabbing, poisoning, pick pocketing, throat slitting bastard! Fight
dirty!

Dual Wield

At level 10, you’ll get the ability to Dual
Wield, which allows you to carry one-handed and off-handed weapons in
your off hand. Should you dual wield? The simple answer
is…hell, yes! While your chance to hit is reduced somewhat,
your damage output increases to roughly the equivalent of a two-handed
weapon. Besides, rogues are not able to use a shield, so what good is
an empty hand? Put a blade in that there hand! Two poisoned blades are
far superior to one poisoned blade. Just listen to ol’ Seven
Fingers. “It just doesn’t feel the same with a
single blade. It feels like……like part of you is
missing. A good part.”

Gear

Try to keep your gear up to date as you level. Since
you’re playing solo, you won’t be able to get your
hands on the superior gear found in the various instances such as the
Deadmines in Westfall or Shadowfang Keep in Silverpine Forest. Not to
worry though. You should be able to get decent gear from vendors (at
the lower levels), then from drops and the auction house later on. Look
for gear that adds to Agility (your most important stat), Stamina (adds
hit points), and attack power (increases your damage). Make sure that
you loot everything that isn’t nailed down. Quality gear on
the auction house can get a little pricey. Happiness is finding loose
change in a dead foe’s pockets.

Zones

Now that you have the basics covered, where to go to forge
your future legend? Listed below are the various zones that you will
explore (or cut a bloody swathe through) as you solo your way up to
40th level.

These little nuggets of information should help safely see you through
to level 40. By using your wits and fighting smart (and dirty!), you
should prove that your rogue is a force to be reckoned with. Keep your
blades sharp (and poisoned), your wits about you, and your pockets full
of gold!

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